campaignsfandomcom-20200223-history
Forum:The Political Class
One of the greatest injustices and inefficiencies of our time is, in my opinion, the existance of a political class in Westminster or Washington, taking policy decisions on areas in which they have no expertise - just as you would not expect a lawyer to be running an investment bank, so you should not expect a politician to be running the nation's finances at the Treasury. I think that there are two main arguments why we should not have a political class making decisions, namely that of fairness and equality, and that of efficiency. Fairness The "one man, one vote" principle, which is fundamental to modern democracy is not, I think, limited to its literal interpretation of equal participation in elections; it extends to influence on policy in general. Now, the very institution of elecions is intended to allow every person equal influence on policy issues, because the people decide in a fair election. However, while this is all very well in principle, in practise, because we do not hold a referendum on every decision before parliament, or indeed every issue in a party's manifesto, some decision-making authority must necessarily fall into the hands of the executive - we give them general guidance on the way we want to go by choosing whom to favour with our votes (voting Labour if we prefer high-tax high-spend, or Conservative if we prefer the contrary), but many significant decisions must still be made by them. Since a not inconsiderable amount of power must, as we have seen, be vested in the hands of a relatively few, it is necessary to determine which few these should be. It seems fair that those with the greatest qualification for the job (that is to say, those with the greatest subject matter expertise) should be appointed, for reasons which I will set out below. However, what is in fact the case is that a number of well-connected, middle class (with the exception of Her Majesty's esteemed Deputy Prime Minister, The Rt. Hon. Mr. John Prescott) lawyers hold the power, largely because of their connections, and the fact that they have learnt throught their schoold debating societies how to come across as charming, suave and confident. The fact that certain people who have no intrinsic qualification are able to gain disproportionate representation because of accidents of birth is fundamentally incongruous with democratic principles, and indeed with socialism as a whole, which is why I deplore it. Efficiency My second argument against the existance of a political class is that of efficiency. I think that the country can in general be compared to the situation of a public corporation, where the electorate are the shareholders, and the government are the company executives. I submit that a company would never appoint a lawyer to manage its finances, and neither should the country - they know, as we apparrantly don't, that a financial expert is best placed to make the best decisions, so just as their CFO is most probably an accountant of some sort, the Chancellor of the Exchequer should be an economist, the Defence Secretary a soldier, and the Foreign Secretary a diplomat. In short, if you want the best decisions, appoint the best-quailified people. It's as simple as that. In short, I've shown you that there are two compelling arguments against the existance of a political class: that it is incompatible with the "one man, one vote" principle of democracy, and that it is highly inefficient.